Their colour is so misleading, because red food should be like really tangy and strong. Either sweet like a strawberry or cranberry, or savoury like ketchup. Tomatoes taste like they should be a pale green or yellow, but they’re red. It’s fucked up.

  • dead [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    7·
    2 days ago

    https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2012/06/researchers-identify-gene-controls-tomato-ripening

    This gene also influences how tomato fruit ripen, the reason commercial tomatoes develop into perfectly red, store-ready fruit.

    However, this same trait reduces sugars and nutrients in the fruit.

    Naturally, tomatoes unevenly ripen, showing darker green patches when unripe and variable redness when ripe – traits that still show up in garden-variety and heirloom breeds.

    However, in the late 1920s, commercial breeders stumbled across a natural mutation that caused tomatoes to ripen uniformly – from an even shade of light green to an even shade of red.

    The uniform redness makes it ideal for groceries, where customers expect evenly colored, red fruit.